Following President Obama's speech about the need for immigration reform, the Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are reintroducing the DREAM act.
Senate Democrats plan to reintroduce the DREAM Act on Wednesday, with their counterparts in the House following suit. Given Republican opposition the bills likely won't get far, but Obama will try to make certain voters know who to blame.
It appears the Democrats are moving (in a nice display of coordination between White House and Congress) to solidify and energize the Latino vote going into 2012.
This move sets up some of the electoral strategy for 2012. We've already seen that both Nevada and Arizona are growing increasingly purple. Arizona went strongly for McCain in 2008 but has a large (and growing) disaffected Latino population. Nevada has been trending towards the Republicans and looks to be a harder pickup for Obama in 2012, but was won by Harry Reid on a strategy that explicitly courted the Latino vote. Now the Democratic party is looking to highlight the differences with the Republicans and capture a larger bloc of these voters. While it wasn't likely that too many Latinos were going to go Republican in the Southwest, the failure of the Democrats to get the DREAM Act through with a majority in both houses of Congress had the potential to lead to many Latinos sitting out 2012. With this reintroduction, the Democrats will force Republicans to vote against Latinos, highlighting Democrats as the friend of Latinos and Republicans as their enemy.
While immigration reform is hardly an issue that Latinos as a group are unanimous in supporting, the DREAM Act is a particularly good battle to fight. It's hard to make a coherent argument against allowing illegal immigrant students a path to citizenship. They don't bear any part of blame for breaking the law by coming here (a decision of their parents) and they are specifically trying to benefit the US, not "drain resources." Personally, I don't see any solid argument against the DREAM that doesn't rely on implicit or explicit racism.
We already have one winning issue: the Republicans are the party of cuts to Medicare. That will perhaps sway some older voters to either vote Democratic or at least not vote Republican. With this issue, perhaps we can remind Latino voters that Democrats are on their side, and ride the shifting demographics of this country through the next decade to continued Democratic victories.
Plus, it's the right thing to do.
Update
I just saw this story. The advocates for the DREAM Act are pushing forward on the local level. The Illinois State Senate just passed the state-version of the DREAM Act after a lot of student organizing. It moves on to the Illinois House next.
Update #2
Some people were noting in the comments that it's the young activists (and not Democratic politicians) who deserve the real credit for this. I agree, but I like to congratulate the Democrats when they do the right (if politically expedient) thing.
Personally, immigration reform is an important issue to me. M mother immigrated from Chile in the 70's during the Pinochet era. She's been a US citizen for years (and recently, a strong volunteer for the Democratic party). Some of my family have even been illegal immigrants. When I was a child, I helped my aunt illegally cross the border from Mexico. Tia Lily had been living with my uncle (who worked in IT) in Los Angeles with her daughter (my cousin) Andrea. When my grandmother got sick and was dying of lung cancer back in Valparaiso, Tia Lily, Andrea, my mother, and I all rushed down to see her. She died the day we got there.
Unfortunately, we hadn't filled out paper for visas before we went. That wasn't a problem for me and my mom (we were citizens). But my aunt was just a resident, and the US wouldn't approve a visa to let her back in, even though her husband was gainfully employed working with software engineering. Tia Lily and Andrea stayed in Chile for a year before they finally got tired of having a split up family. They flew to Mexico and my family met them down there. We crossed the border by splitting up our families- my mom drove in a car with Andrea and Tio Pepe and pretended Andrea was her daughter, while Tia Lily drove with my dad and me and pretended she was my mother. It worked, and she got across the border. After a couple decades of teaching and working as a secretary in an elementary school, Tia Lily died of breast cancer, a citizen of the United States.
I haven't been helping as much as I could with the immigration fight. I went out for the immigration protests in Los Angeles 2007 and was there for some of the tear gas and beatings (I managed to escape through the park before it got really bad). I haven't participated enough since. Passing this news along doesn't make that much of a difference in the long run. Maybe this link will help. You can use it to organize and volunteer. I hope we can get the DREAM Act through as a first step towards more comprehensive immigration reform. Maybe then the people who come to this country and do their best to make it better, like my Tia Lily, will be able to become citizens, and not have to sneak across the border.